Filtering for 3 handed, did you win in the SB?

If u were playing live would you straddle OTB, why or why not, under what circumstances?

Coming from the DFS world, piranha is already one of the top players imo. A solid rotogrinder and I can see why he crushed at the poker tables. Best of luck TP and....

More Mob Stories!!

Thanks MT,

I talked about this early on in this thread I believe. There were a number of things I did (in no particular order):

-Read Books/2+2

Primarily strategy related material early in my career. Towards the end it was mostly material to help with the mental/emotional aspects of the game.

-Watched Videos. Not limited to LHE videos, I used to watch videos from the best players at other games to gain a sense of their level of thought. I also found that I'd get ideas for LHE by listening to how the better players approached problems and situations at other games.

-Studied my play in HEM/PT. I was always analyzing preflop play as I've mentioned. Towards the end I was doing a lot of session reviews. I typically picked longer high stakes sessions to review where I'd had a losing session. Anytime I'd come to a spot that was questionable, I'd pause and try to figure out the right play. Sometimes it'd be a matter of seconds and sometimes over an hour on one decision.

I took a lot of notes on my opponents during these session reviews as well. I was always amazed at how much more I was able to see and take in by focusing on one table with the ability to pause. I'd see all kinds of noteworthy plays by my opponents that I completely missed at the table due to multitabling.

I also looked at some of the more common situations that came up at the table that my HUD couldn't help with. A few examples of this:

How often is my opponent c/r the turn out of position after 3-betting preflop?
How often is my opponent 3-barreling after a steal raise where I've defended from the big blind?'

I also studied the play of specific players in HEM, typically recreational players. Again I was always looking for things that weren't readily available from my HUD - How often is my opponent bluffing when he raises the river or what's my opponent's limping or cold-calling range.

-Discussed hands with friends. I always had a friend or group of friends that I'd be talking about hands with. I was lucky to always have people that asked a lot of good, tough questions. I can't understate how valuable it is to thoughtfully discuss situations. Having to articulate your thoughts about difficult situations forces you to think deeply about them and helps to reinforce critical thinking patterns. Coaching someone falls under this form of learning as well.

I did use software to help with analyzing hands and situations. You mentioned one in CardRunners EV. I also used Poker Stove, FlopZilla, and ProPokerTools. PPT looked like a powerful learning tool. I didn't learn all the specific programming language that went with it but for someone that does take the time, I think that program has potential to be a great learning tool.

Thanks a lot HH. The same applies to you.

1) That's a good question. I held two jobs before I started playing poker so I imagine I'd still be in the corporate world somewhere working 9-5. I've always been driven to gamble though so it's possible I may have found another game that I could play for a living. I went through a couple year stretch right before I got into poker where I was playing backgammon pretty seriously. I'm not sure what kind of living I could of made playing backgammon full-time but that's one possibility on the gambling side.

2) I wouldn't recommend playing poker for a living to anyone. Poker requires such a unique emotional and mental skill set to be successful that I think very few people have the ability to succeed long-term. Unless that person has a deep passion for gambling or games, I think they'd be better off choosing another career path.

3) Definitely misrepresented to the public. The gamut of public views range from us being rock stars that travel around risking hundreds of thousands of dollars on the turn of a card to seedy criminals that are involved in gambling and illicit activities. Very few people see poker for the game it is, with similarities to many other strategic games including investing. And the profession as something that requires extreme discipline, commitment, and hard work like any other profession.

I have heard some very good players have diff takes on either opening or not opening 22 or 33 on the button in a 6 max game. In your opinion with no information on opp is this a profitable play? How about a2/a3 in the same scenario.

Or protecting these hands from BB after UTG raise

Do you miss me? I miss you.

Just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying this thread.

1. This is a really tough question. You narrowed down the definition of best a little bit but I still think there are other variables that could/should be considered. For example, by your definition of purely skill I'd list Heisenberg in my top 5. But if we're going to include emotional control (and I think we should), he's no longer in the top 5.

What about guys that play a thousand hands a week vs. guys that play ten thousand hands a week. The guys that play a thousand hands a week in most cases aren't making as much money but generally can play a better overall game because they're more refreshed and focused at the tables - so how does that play in? Imagine Dwayne Wade and Tim Duncan play once a week in the NBA and get to rest their knees and bodies the other six days. Should their per game statistics at the end of the year count the same as Lebron who plays all eighty-two games?

It's a tough question that would need a lot of qualifications for me to answer.

2. I never thought seating-scripts were a problem at LHE. I actually think the operators would be at a disadvantage in today's environment. The players now have all the high stakes tables open and as soon as the "reserved" sign appears on a seat, before the player has actually taken a seat, you'll see the table fill up.

So players are actually sitting there, monitoring the table, and sitting before the other player has even taken a seat. I believe the seating script (I've never used one) waits until the player actually sits before taking a seat. From my understanding many of the scripts are designed to take position on specific players when they sit. So the script would have to wait in those instances until the player is actually seated which would be too late in today's environment.

And if I'm incorrect about how the scripts work and their usage in LHE, I can say with certainty that if I have a table open and am monitoring it, I can get position on the new player a very high percentage of the time just by using my eyes alone.

To answer your question, yes I think it has a negative effect. The regulars sitting with tables open and immediately joining when they see the reserved sign on a seat has the same negative effect.

Imagine you're a recreational player that decides to take a seat at an empty table. As soon as you click into the table, and sometimes before you're even selected the amount of money you want to buy-in with, the table fills. What would you think?

If it was me and I didn't understand things better, I'd think I was playing against a bunch of bots or a bunch of players Poker Stars deployed. How else do you explain a table sitting empty for hours that magically fills in an instant every time you sit? And worse it's often the same players or same group of players sitting. So it looks organized, premeditated, and/or like these players are working together.

Hi Tony,

discovered this thread a few days ago and I really enjoyed your stories. Thanks for this well and good luck with the DFS!

Interesting that you wouldn't recommend poker to people. I come from a math background, and I recommend it to all my fellow math major friends. Maybe not as a hard-core professional, but at least as a money making pastime. They would have the skill; the question is if they can handle the variance. If you think poker is a lot like investing, shouldn't it also appeal to a lot of financial savvy people?

Can you rank these players? Otterkopf, zzieglar, debline_ucho, st1ckman, jama-darma. Assume these players sat down and played each other when rested with no rec player involved. I think a lot of people would be interested to hear your opinion since you are the most qualified person to answer this.

Generally the closer you are to the rec player the better. Once you get to the 4L and 5L seats there isn't a huge difference and if both seats were available, I'd always take the 5L seat on the chance that another recreational player sits in the 4L seat.

Regarding 10-max tables, I haven't looked at anything past the 5L seat. I would guess once you get to the 6L through 9L seats, there is little to no difference.

This one was asked a few questions back. There are too many variables that would go into "top" for me to give an answer to this.

I was always listening to music while I played. I'm not sure I could of put in the long hours I did without it. I found it helped it me get into a zone and to be relaxed.

I've done some reading on this and supposedly the best music to get your mind into a zone is music that you're familiar with but doesn't have many words. Ideally your subconscious should recognize the music and your conscious shouldn't be making effort to listen or understand it which is probably why studies have found music without words works best.

That said, nearly all the music I listened to when playing had words. I listened to a lot of R&B, Hip-Hop, Easy Listening, and relaxing music when playing. Nearly all the songs I'd listen to were songs I'd heard hundreds of times.

Thanks a lot.

RotoGrinders is the best. There are some sport specific sites like Pro Football Focus and Football Outsiders that have a lot of useful information. Outside of those kinds of sites, I'd recommend RotoWire.

Hey Luckb0xxx,

Nothing off the top of my head. I do remember playing with you from time to time but I don't have any specific reads that come to mind. Outside of the people I played with on a day-in/day-out basis, I really don't remember too many specifics about people's games. My focus has always been on the recreational players, I know many of their games better than any regular.

Hey PK-

I do donk on occasion but it's rare - I'd guess around 1-2% of my postflop actions involve donking.

It's hard to come up with a specific example off the top of my head. Unfortunately my HEM isn't working properly either so I can't look it up.

Just generally, the situations I'd often be donking in are situations where I think I have the best hand but it's very unlikely that my opponent is going to bet. If it was a good player I was playing against, I'd want to be sure that I have some bluffs to balance this.

Regarding donking as a bluff:

If I ever got into a situation where my range was comprised of very few bluffs (and I believed that my opponent recognized this), then I would always donk.

Similar to when leading for value, I'd want to make sure I'm balancing my donk bluffs with donk value hands. And by balance I don't mean that I'm calculating pot odds and creating a donk/bluff to donk/value ratio that offers my opponent an EV neutral situation. Balance to me just means making sure I'm taking both actions with a heavier weight towards donking for value.

I'll get to the rest of your questions later. I'm actually visiting a friend for the next 6 days so I don't know how much free time I'll have but whenever I do have some, I'll answer some more.

Awesome stories!

1) Have you ever considered letting somebody do a treatment on your life story for either print or as a movie/documentary?

2) I'm intrigued by the gambling side of backgammon. The first time I'd ever heard of backgammon for serious money was Gus Hansen. I've also heard Paul Magriel, a math guy who played live MTT for a bit, as a backgammon player/gambler. An old neighbor, Bill Robertie, who co-writes the Harrington on Holdem series, is also a backgammon champion. Never seemed like there was much money in these games, but then I hear some pretty crazy stories about Gus playing high at the side games for the backgammon tourneys. Is high stakes BG still played with any frequency?

Thanks for spending the time with us that could be spent with your family or business.

Really enjoyed this thread and your blog. Especially the pool story. Best of luck in the future.

1. I talked a little bit about the 3/2 structure earlier in this thread. I think you can get away with opening an extra hand for each rank. So let's say your cutoff is Q7 on the button, I think you can open Q6. And if it's J8o, you can open J7o, etc.

I'm not sure what you mean by 3/1 structure. I've only played in games where the big blind is double the small blind or 1.5 times the small blind.

2. Oh yeah, easy call there. You can call any ace in that spot profitably.

3. I'm not sure what position we're in here but if it's the button or SB, then yes you can 3-bet with hands like TJs, and QJs. It would take an extremely tight CO before I'd stop 3-betting these hands - probably an RFI of 15 or less.

So here are some of the reasons why you can 3-bet profitably despite having 40% equity or 45% equity

- You have initiative postflop and are going to win more than your fair share of pots. For example when you've got JTs and your opponent has QJs and the flop comes A8x, you're often going to get a post-flop fold by c-betting the flop.

-There's blind money in the pot to start the hand which reduces the equity we need

-We want our overall range to be balanced to add value to our other hands. If we have a super tight 3-betting range where we're not 3-betting things like 98s, JTs, etc. it becomes a lot easier for our opponents to play against the rest of our range postflop.

1. I talked about BB vs SB earlier in the thread. If the raise came from EP to the button, I'd almost always be flatting. I might make an exception to this if it's a really aggressive player that I think is going to spew bets postflop. Against those player types I'd rather get in as many bets as possible on each street. The other exception is someone that checks back a lot of flops. The better the player is that's checking back flops, the more balanced I'd want my 3-betting range to be.

2. From the big blind, no I'm never folding those.

Fantastic well. Definitely up there among the best i have read. Thank you for taking the time and giving such thoughtful answers!

I'm afraid i don't have much in terms of interesting questions, but i would very much like you to list some books you'd recommend. Preferably non-fiction, but if you have the time throw some of them in as well! (not poker)

Yes, we aren't even close to being unexploitable at LHE. I can't ever envision any human playing perfect GTO at LHE. There just are too many different postflop situations and variables with all the different starting hands/board textures/# of opponents, etc.

I wouldn't say there's tons of room to exploit regs on a whole. The strength of the average regulars game has improved quite a bit over the last 3-4 years. But there is some room. It's still at the point where almost every regular can be identified by some unique tendency or trait. But I think the skill gap between the worst and best regulars continues to narrow.

I also wouldn't say there's tons of room to improve. If there was a scale with no knowledge on one side and all knowledge on the other side, I think we're about 95% of the way to all knowledge but will never get there.

I don't believe there's a single bot playing high stakes LHE on PokerStars. I'd really be surprised if I found out differently. The reason I say this is because I could sense the emotions of nearly every player I'd played with at one point or another.

Hey, thanks for doing this well. Good stuff. Question... I saw you mentioned you've had some success with sports betting. Do you follow any handicappers or services? If so, which and your overall experience/results so far this year with the handicapper/service. TIA

fwiw I wouldnt classify my style as gto at all, I would say that is more sauces' style (not to derail the question)